The present invention generally relates to data processing systems, and more specifically to software development systems for developing World Wide Web (WWW) applications.
Software development traditionally required that the developer first edit his source code. He would then compile the code into an object module, and link-edit one or more object modules into an executable. The executable would then be placed into a library for execution. In the case of transaction processing, this would require either that the transaction processing routine (TPR) library be deallocated by the Transaction Processing (TP) monitor long enough to move the executable into the TPR library, or to force the TP monitor to reload its own high speed copy of the TPR library from the common TPR library. The program would then be tested. The process would then repeat until the software development was complete.
This process was simplified for a great extent for instances where the development and ultimate execution were on the same computer system by the introduction of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). These are typically special purpose text editors executing on personal computers or workstations that provide compiling, linking, loading, and testing in one program. These single system IDEs have become extremely sophisticated. They have been extended to provide development environments for World Wide Web page development and Java Applet development.
One problem with current IDE technology is that these IDE systems operate on a single computer system. At best, they can be used to develop and test program code, WWW pages, and applets for one computer system, then the program executables, WWW pages, and applets can be transferred to a homogeneous computer system for ultimate production. This is the standard mode of Web development in operation today.
Another problem is that using the same type of computer systems for both Web development and Web server execution has serious limitations today. The Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) today operate on Microsoft Windows or Apple MacIntosh based personal computes or Unix based workstations. Extremely user friendly systems have been developed. Unfortunately, these types of system do not lend themselves well to high performance transactional processing. Legacy mainframe computers with high performance transaction processing (TP) monitors are still the best systems for servers that are capable of providing high speed simultaneous access to large shared databases to hundreds, if not thousands, of client systems. Unfortunately, developing and testing programs, web pages, and applets that are to run on these large transaction systems is much more complex than it is on the workstations or personal computers that support typical Integrated Development Environments.
For example, Job Control Language (JCL) is typically required to compile and link-edit transaction processing routines (TPR) on these high performance TP systems. The TPR executables then have to be made available to the TP monitor for high speed access. Similarly, Web pages and Java Applets need to be established so that they can be accessed very quickly, such as being loaded as records into a database. None of these features is provided by the typical state-of-the-art IDE running on a personal computer or workstation.
A method or system that provides the user friendly benefits found in personal computer or workstation based Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) for developing Web based transactional processing routines (TPRs), Web pages, and applets for execution and testing on high performance transactional systems would thus be advantageous.